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Show HN: OffChess – Offline chess puzzles app (offchess.com)

369 points by avadhesh18 ↗ HN
Hi HN!

I'm the developer of rdx, a mildly popular ad-free, privacy and user friendly Reddit client. This time, I made something for a very specific use case: solving chess puzzles with no internet.

Why? Well, my Wi-Fi is terrible in the bathroom—and that's where I do some of my best thinking. I tried printing out “mate in X” puzzles to solve offline, but they weren’t fun without interaction. So I built OffChess.

OffChess is an iPhone/Android app that contains over 100,000 chess puzzles, fully offline and completely ad-free. You can solve puzzles by category (Mate in 1/2/3/4/5, tactics like pins/forks/skewers, or openings like Sicilian/French, etc). You gain or lose points based on how you perform, so there's a light rating system to keep things engaging.

No accounts, no tracking, no monthly subscriptions, no internet required. Just pure, old-school tactical chess training, wherever you are.

You can check out the iPhone/iPad app at https://apps.apple.com/us/app/chess-puzzles-offchess/id67447... or the Android app at https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.offchess

Would love feedback, bug reports, or suggestions.

Thanks!

65 comments

[ 3.7 ms ] story [ 83.1 ms ] thread
eajr
Very cool app. Chess.com costs too much and lichess is rather ugly and has barebones puzzle support. I like how you can choose different categories. Will be using this from now on. Btw you have "Egnlish Opening" misspelled.
heap_perms
For tactics I really like chesstempo.com. It has free, unlimited puzzles. It is to my mind superior for tactics training. It also has a comments feature which I really like.
tajd
This looks really cool! I can't remember what article I was reading the other day but it was advocating for local first software as being the true goal of creating user friendly software -> this app absolutely meet's that goal. Looking forwards to using it.
chatmasta
Awesome. I’ve never understood why Lichess limits the offline download to 50 puzzles.
khoury
Very cool looking! Downloaded. What tech did you build it with? :)
rprouse
The app is full screen on my Samsung mobile so your bottom navigation is underneath the onscreen Android navigation and unusable. Happy to submit an issue and screenshots if you have a GitHub repo.

Other than that, it is working nicely so far.

mhitza
I have TacticMaster (available on F-droid) but your app looks more polished and will have to give it a try as well.
stavros
This is a nice app, but I have one bug report: When I tap on a piece, and it can capture another piece, it looks like it just can't move that way. Capturable pieces should have their background change somehow, to indicate that I can capture them.
bambax
Very nice! but why not a webapp as well (for those of us who seldom use their phone and can get bored at the office)?
aoeusnth1
Probably because lichess.org exists?
defrost
Nice. Any retrograde chess puzzles with this?
laurentlb
Nice project!

As it was not clear from the description, there's a one-time payment (4.29€) to get more than 7 puzzles in a day.

Lichess also offers a good alternative to this, although their offline support is limited.

zikduruqe
> offline support is limited.

You are limited to 50 puzzles when off the network, and when you reconnect, the next 50 (or the delta between how many you played and 50) are redownloaded.

watwut
ChessKing has some stuff availabke only after payment, but has pretty good thematical collections.
tangoalpha
Nice app. Using moto edge 60 pro. The app navigation gets hidden under the phone navigation icons. I'd like to pay. Except without user login, I am unable to figure out if the purchase can be linkedin to my 2-3 devices (each of which may use a different Google account)
shric
I have an iPhone 16 Pro and there is an annoying delay between tapping a move and the piece moving
44za12
Cool app. I’ve been thinking of building a similar PWA for a while now, might actually do that.
dan_can_code
great app, I like the adaptive style, but one piece of feedback is that, sometimes it is not clear what the goal is. For example, the language "Brilliant queen win ahead!" tells me, right, I am going to checkmate for the win with the queen in this game. But, actually the puzzle is to instead win the queen piece. "win" in chess to me always means checkmate.

Overall great app.

bongodongobob
The goal is always the best move. You shouldn't think of "what is my goal?", you should be finding the best move. This is something I struggled with as a beginner. There is always a best move, find it. Don't search for "the goal".
modernerd
Great start! Gentle feedback:

- Text hints should probably be off by default, they give too much of a hint.

- Auto-advance to next puzzle would be helpful, clicking “next puzzle” gets tiresome.

- Typo in the puzzle categories list: “Egnlish Opening”

mansoor_
Can you tell us about the tech stack you used and why?
wery
I can't select the settings button on my Pixel 8 :|
iambateman
This is cool! Is there a chess board library that you used or did you have to built it from scratch?
kij
Nice, bought to replace 'chess tactics puzzles' the addition of rating changes sold me.

Too late did I notice that there is no share fen button. I use that for harder puzzles when I want to understand why a given solution wouldn't work. Mostly just share to Chessis.

yunwal
Love the app! Would love it twice as much if you allowed me to turn off the sounds (it turns off any existing podcasts or music).
avadhesh18
Have pushed the update, should be visible in a few days on app store.
notcrazylol
Thank you and God bless you my friend :)
tomhow
[stub for offtopicness]
lucb1e
Note that the discussion continues in the collapsed comment by tomhow: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44499848

It says "stub for offtopicness" but, skimming them, literally all comments are on-topic. Not all substantial ('very nice app', 'whats the tech stack?') but a lot of other comments are a normal amount of substantial and also in there... I don't get it, but note that you can expand that subthread

90s_dev
A bit off topic, but since you mentioned doing your best thinking in the bathroom, two things you should try are (a) no caffeine, and (b) no soy. These should dramatically cut down on the number of times you have to go and how long it takes.
tigroferoce
Solo developer, no ads, no subscription. Take my money! And thanks for writing decent software.